My favorite track from Habits & Contradictions gets some visuals courtesy of Q and David M. Helman. Now if I could only get a clean edit of this for the airwaves…
This is undoubtedly one of the hardest records out right now, which as a fairly mellow, pseudo slow jam, is quite an accomplishment. Big shout to Ab and Schoolboy Q, who came by the Sound Session studio this past weekend. Interview coming soon.
RIP Alori Joh.
Just in time for his weekend here in Seattle (shows tonight at Seattle U and tomorrow at Neumos), Ab-Soul drops his newest video, this time for “Terrorist Threats” with Danny Brown and the lovely miss Jhene Aiko. I’ve been hoping to play this on Sound Session for a while, but it’s a bit too dirty to clean up. Works pretty nicely for the web though! Dope record.
Nardwuar hit a home run with all his hip-hop interviews at SXSW last year and this year was no different. Dude was everywhere. Here’s his clip with Kendrick Lamar, where K. Dot gives you a little insight into his history. Love the story about his dad driving him and his mom home from the hospital for the first time and blasting Big Daddy Kane because “he has to hear this.” Awesome.
Been trying to tell y’all about BJ for quite some time now. “Good Luv’n” is off his recently released project, Pineapple Now-Laters. Go cop that, for real.
While I don’t anticipate ever being able to play this on Sound Session since a clean version would essentially turn in to an instrumental, this joint is dope. One of the reasons why we should be rooting for Kendrick to continue to blow up is that unlike many of the other new artists, K-Dot seems to take more chances with his music. There’s a lot of talented cats killing it right now, but not too many seem to have the ability to make a 5 mic hip-hop classic. Kendrick does. We’ll see if he’s able to reach that potential, but with the release of Section.80, he continues his ascent.
As the hip-hop community, and all who love music, reel from the loss of the legendary Gil Scott-Heron, I thought to myself about the messages in his records. Do today’s artists have the desire and ability to make music that elevates to the levels Gil effortlessly resided in?Â
While mass media would certainly tell you otherwise, I think they can. We certainly need music that offers us escape, but it’s vitally important that we continue to create good music with real purpose.
Shout to Kendrick for doing just that with one of the best songs of 2011 so far.